Gingrich Accused of Creating Gridlock, as if it was a Bad Thing

COMMENTARY | Bill Schneider, writing for Politico, has launched another in the flurry of broadsides against Newt Gingrich. Among the familiar litany is a new one: Gingrich, from the moment that he entered Congress in 1978, championed gridlock.

There is something to be said about Schneider's accusation. Before Gingrich began his famous special-order speeches in the early 1980s in which he excoriated the Democratic majority in the House, Republicans were regarded pretty much with contempt. They had no influence, except to go along to get along, agreeing to Democratic initiatives, getting, on sufferance, crumbs if they cooperated.

Gingrich and his band of rebels were about as welcome in the House that was ruled by the likes of Tip O'Neill, an old New Deal-style pol, and then Jim Wright, a Texas wheeler-dealer, as the barbarians in Ancient Rome. They just didn't know their place. O'Neill was once provoked into saying something on the floor of the House that drew a reprimand from that body. Wright was tossed out in a flurry of ethics charges engineered by Gingrich. He drove the Democrats to distraction.

Then, when Gingrich engineered the Contract with America, it was as if the barbarians had taken Rome, murdered the Emperor, and were having a feast in the ruins. Mind, the accomplishments of the Gingrich Revolution, which included the first balanced budgets in a generation, welfare reform, and a cut in the capital gains tax were more a tribute to the will to get things done than gridlock.

Still, gridlock can be a good thing if it stops stupid things from happening. A little gridlock would have been lovely in 2009 while Obama and Congressional Democrats were ramming through the stimulus package and healthcare reform while the American people howled in outrage. In this context Schneider's characterization of Obama as some kind of squish, easily rolled, reads like some other guy by that name. Obama's accomplishment of a government takeover of the health care industry accompanied by trillion dollar plus deficits does not bespeak a human jellyfish.

Of course gridlock can be a bad thing, when it gets time to cut spending, cut taxes, and reform entitlements. It was bad when southern Democrats were filibustering civil rights legislation when Gingrich was still a lad. But then that all depends on one's point of view. If President Gingrich starts ramming through a spending and tax-cutting agenda, folks like Schneider will likely think that gridlock is not such a bad thing after all.

Source: Gingrich: Man who created gridlock, Bill Schneider, Politico, Dec 6, 2011